Running with the Tarahumaras



The Mission at Cerocahui, the town where the race started

Barranca de Urique, Chihuahua, Mexico- It was just me and Miguel Laura-- the other racers had been left behind in several miles ago. We had covered perhaps nine of the 11 miles between the town of Cerocahui, where the race started, and Bauchivo, its finish.  The sun was high overhead and the road was so thick with dust that our footfalls barely made a sound, though I felt like each time my leg fell it was with the weight of a sledgehammer.    Miguel, extremely small in stature but with calf muscles that would make Michelangelo's David jealous, was absolutely punishing me on the uphills.  But on the downhills I made up the distance with my longer stride and we continued to trade off the lead.  Any minute now the long downhill would begin that would bring us into Bauchivo, with its streets packed with people celebrating the anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. 



Parades to celebrate the Revolution.



I am racing a group of Tarahumara Indians, famed worldwide for their endurance running abilities.  Most people in the U.S. know them from the bestseller Born to Run, which tells the story of how the Tarahumaras can, and often do, run for over a hundred miles in endurance races, kicking a small leather ball.  Sometimes they even run barefoot across the rugged canyon country, which has sparked a barefoot running craze in the United States (though I'm pretty sure it´s not out of preference that the Tarahumaras run barefoot). Tarahumaras have gone to compete in world class distance events such as the Leadville 100 in Colorado and have often won.  Today´s race was short for them, like a 100 meter dash for a 10K runner.

But let me back up here and compare a race in the Barranca del Cobre country of Mexico and the race world of the U.S.

Race lead up the U.S:  Subscribe to Runner's World.  Follow the intricate training pattern of speed-work while making sure to take days of recovery so your muscles can recharge.  Engage in at least an hour every day of supplemental exercises that condition, for example, the minuscule muscles in your lower abdomen in order to avoid injury and to reach your absolute maximum potential on race day. With your running buddies, deploy liberally such terms as anaerobic threshold, farlek, and PR, which you learned from Runner's World.  Determine whether or not your buddies are really runners based on their reaction to these terms.  Starting three days before, begin to eat carbohydrate rich foods which will increase the glycogen stores in your muscles.  Take care to not over-exercise the day before.  Read inspiring books about poor people in foreign countries that run really fast without exercising the minuscule muscles of their lower abdomen. Be in awe of them.

Race lead up in the Barrancas: Work all day in the corn fields.  Walk 40 miles to the apple trees you have in the mountains.  Pick bag and carry them back. Eat lots of tortillas.

Race day pre-race in the U.S.:  Eat the special breakfast of toasted bagels without anything on them (you don´t want a side ache) that you´ve trained your body to accept in strenuous exercise.  Don your $180 watch that tells you the time, your heart rate, your longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates, your average speed, your velocity relative to the velocity of your dog...  Don your $40 Aesics shorts and $40 singlet-- at least you will look good dammit, when you cross the finish line.  Make sure that you have your special light weight mid-distance road racing flats (not your mid-distance track spikes, 5K/10K track spikes, cross country spikes, marathon road racers, or god forbid, your trainers) and your lucky socks that you will put on at the last minute before the gun goes off, which will send an electric pulse to a complex computerized mat that initializes the computer chip that you have laced onto your shoe with a special infallible system (that you are proud to claim as your own design) so that at the end of the race you will know your time to the millisecond and will know exactly who you are better than and who is better than you ...


Race lead up in the Barrancas: Eat some tortillas. Walk 10 miles to where you can get a ride to the race.  Put on some beat-up trainers if you are lucky.  If not, the good old sandals made of old tires will do.  Hang out for a few hours in the hot sun (and getting hotter) because no one actually decided in what town the race would start, let alone where in town.  Get suddenly escorted, along with other racers, by men with AK 47 submachine guns who load you into the back of their pickups to take you to where they want the race to start (are they mafia? are they police? does it really make a difference?).  Arrive with so much dust in your lungs that if you coughed it up you could make a brick out of it. Eat seven oranges because they are offered to you.  Put on the XXL t-shirt bearing some political propaganda the town president makes everyone wear.  Chuck half of your eighth orange into the gutter and take of running because one of the runners took off and the race has begun.

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Miguel and I were now in the streets of Bauchivo.  I was a few yards in front of him, but my form was starting to fall apart and my feet were slapping painfully against the cobblestones.  I had no idea as to where exactly the finish line was.  It could be in one block or one kilometer. 

"Which way?" I desperately panted to bystanders, who would shrug or vaguely wave in a northerly direction.  I picked up the pace, trying to get a lead on Miguel on the downhill.  I was really regretting those seven and a half oranges. 



Miguel receiving his first place prize money.  I think he is looking
away like that because he´s contemplating running the 40 miles or
so back to his house.



The road plunged into a rancid creek choked with big trucks honking their horns.  People motioned us to the entrance of the rodeo/ soccer arena on the other side of the creek.  We thrashed through the water, me on the inside of a rumbling F 350 and Miguel on the outside.  When we emerged on the far bank he was ahead of me.  He was pulling away.  We entered the stadium and I could see the tape and I was giving it all I had.  But he was stronger and ran through the tape a few seconds ahead of me.

"Good job," I said to him after a full minute of gasping and wheezing.  "That was tough, huh?"

I looked up.  He wasn´t really sweating.  Or breathing hard.  He shrugged.  My legs threatened to buckle.

And now we come to the final comparison between U.S. and Tarahumara race culture:

U.S. Post Race Refreshment: Expensive energy beverage charged with electrolytes and essence of acai berry to purge the toxic lactic acid build up with a burst of antioxidants!

Barrancas Post Race Refreshment: Tacate beer bought with your second place prize money for yourself and everyone else too because you are the rich gringo.